


Do you still love me?

by rickyisms



Category: Check Please! (Webcomic)
Genre: Bitty is mentioned, Gen, Infidelity, Relationship Talks, Sort Of, discussions of non-monogomy, everyone is comfortable, i had to write something, no one is outed, this is just whiskey introspection, whiskey is having a sexuality crisis on top of his 800 other crises
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-09
Updated: 2020-04-09
Packaged: 2021-03-02 03:46:54
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,779
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23558572
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rickyisms/pseuds/rickyisms
Summary: Whiskey's confusion is not new. His girlfriend has the patience of a saint
Relationships: Chad(s) (Check Please!)/Connor "Whiskey" Whisk, Connor "Whiskey" Whisk & His girlfriend
Comments: 10
Kudos: 100





	Do you still love me?

**Author's Note:**

> so i really like the idea of Whiskey and his girlfriend as childhood friends who everyone kind of pressured to get together and that being the reason Whiskey doesn't want to break up with her at first. And then it's more complicated. anyway, relationships are complicated and there's more than one way to love someone

She knows. Of course she knows, how could she not? This girl is his best friend before she’s anything else to him. Even if she hadn’t saw, which he’s pretty sure she did, she can probably sense some kind of turmoil in him with her magical-intuitive-girl-best-friend powers. 

Connor kissed a boy last night, just to see how it felt. He’d always wondered what stubble would feel like against his cheek, if there was anything inherently different about slipping a guy the tongue. It had never occurred to him to examine that impulse until he was eight beers and two tequila shots in at a graduation party in the middle of the desert. 

High school had sucked in some ways, been fun in others, but either way they were drinking like the world was going to end. It was in a sense, at least the world as they knew it. 

There was this guy in a tie-dye t-shirt and a pair of jean shorts. His hair was long and curly and kept out of his eyes by a bandana and he was holding a joint. He looked at Connor from across the bonfire. Connor had talked to him in a few of their shared classes, but nothing more than you’d expect out of necessity. It was a small high school, a graduating class of about seventy-five kids were sitting around the fire, throwing old textbooks and assignments on to the burn pile. And the boy with the joint just kept looking at Connor. 

So Connor got up and they walked over to where his car was parked, and the boy sparked the joint and Connor let him press it to his lips. The boy was looking into his eyes as he let the smoke fill his lungs and Connor’s mind was clear for the first time in a long time. He still checked to make sure no one was standing near them before he lurched forward, his chest bumping against the boys, pressing his lips to his. Connor doesn’t remember his name, but he remembers his lips tasting like chocolate and pot and peanuts. And his hands were clammy as they came up to cup Connor’s cheek. 

And Connor forgot about everything else. All the reasons he shouldn’t kiss boys melted away. The NHL had always felt far away from Arizona, but he wasn’t even thinking about it when the boy’s tongue was in his mouth. The boy pulled away first, it gets blurry from there, but Connor knows he stumbled away from the car and back to the party, he knows that he drank more and walked his girlfriend home in dead silence. 

She knows. Of course she knows. So Connor texts her first. 

_ I have something to tell you.  _

He rides his bike to her house before she answers him. The clear head that had come from being wasted had left and every single anxiety that he’s always had returns with a vengeance. He wakes up convinced that she knows, convinced that she saw, convinced that he has to beg her to forgive him. 

Because he really does love her. She’s never abandoned him, never told him his dreams were stupid. She’s just always been there, back when they were just friends, and now that she’s his girlfriend. And she’s so good, and everyone always told them they should date and he just assumed they knew best when he asked her out. She’s a constant, someone who holds his hand as he turns his life upside down for hockey and if he loses her over this, over some dumb impulse at a party, he doesn’t know if he’ll survive it. 

He’s pounding on her door before he really knows what he’s doing. He can explain, he swears. She opens the door wearing her hangover uniform, a pair of black tights and one of Connor’s sweaters. It’s oversized on her, it swallows her hands and makes her look even smaller than she already is. 

“Connor?” She says. 

He looks at her, already a pleading look in his eyes. 

“I’m so sorry,” He says, he’s out of breath. It’s like all the blood has drained out of his body on the way over. He feels cold and afraid, and like he’s done something to change his life in a way he can’t ever take back. 

“Can we talk?” He says. 

“Yeah,” she says. The look on her face is worry, but Connor sees disgust, he sees pity and sadness. 

“Are your parents home?” He asks.

“No.”

So they sit down on the couch in the middle of the living room. He spent so much time in this house, studying, getting ready to go out. He took his prom pictures on her front lawn. They used to sit on her bed in silence, each working on a different assignment. Her parents didn’t let them close the door, even back when they were just friends. 

She folds her legs under her, comfortably rests her arm on the back of the couch. Connor can feel the full weight of her focus on his face. Concern is written across her brows and he feels like he might throw up. 

And then he realizes what he’s doing. He’s telling someone, he’s going to have to find words and he’s going to have to tell someone. Because he’s sure she already knows… but if he doesn’t tell her then she’ll break up with him and when he’s with her he just feels  _ so normal.  _

All Whiskey wants is to be normal. For this to be easy. So for a minute he considers not telling her, but then he sees the way she’s looking at him. That look that only a best friend can give to another best friend and it spills out of him. 

“I kissed someone last night,” he blurts. 

Her face doesn’t fall, but her brow furrows even more. He expects anger, or tears, but instead he gets confusion, concern. 

“Who?” She asks. 

And Connor has to swallow some pride, and also the spit that he didn’t realize he’d forgotten to swallow before he says, 

“I don’t know his name.”

Connor’s a bad boyfriend, he knows that already, but this makes him want to curl up into a ball and never show his face again. Her eyebrows shoot up and her mouth hangs open for just a second before she snaps it shut. 

“Honey,” she says, she puts her hand on his shoulder. Her touch is light, soft and Whiskey leans into it. 

He nods. 

“Do you want to break up?” She asks. 

Whiskey shoots up straight, “No,” he says, “No! God no, I thought you’d want to… Because I…”

“Cheated on me?” She says. 

Whiskey nods. 

“Do you want to date… him?” She asks. 

Whiskey shakes his head furiously, “I love you,” he manages to choke out, “I’m not… it was just. I was drunk and not thinking and it was stupid and dumb and I’m not like  _ that  _ I don’t…”

“Okay,” she says, “I believe you.”

So she buries her head in his shoulder and hugs him tight and he tries not to cry and they agree not to talk about it because she understands what hockey wants him to be. She understands that they want the masculine man and his high school sweetheart to hold hands at the Stanley Cup parade. They’re glued together by this tether of a lifelong friendship that Whiskey feels might snap if they broke up. 

Connor gets through the summer and it’s so normal and he loves her. He’s almost certain of that. So certain in fact, that he can almost forget the way he looked at those shirtless pictures of Jack Zimmermann at the NHL combine when he was a kid, the way that he bookmarked the article they appeared in so he could look at them again. 

Connor becomes Whiskey and he shoves down all of those feelings and conflicts. And he’s slapped in the face with Bitty. Out and proud at Samwell. He’s the kind of person his mother would tell to :”just tone it down a little” and his father would accuse of “showboating.” 

And he pours all of his energy into hockey. He works out, he studies, he goes to his games, that’s it. Kegsters are a no go,because what if he does it again? It’s not a conscious fear, but something inside of him knows that he won’t be able to keep the conflict from boiling over if he gets whatever the fuck’s in tub juice coursing through his system. 

It does happen though. Three times before the winter break. He goes to a party where he knows the hockey team won’t be and he lets himself go. It’s not like he goes in with the intention of kissing boys, but a few beers in and the curiosity returns, a few more beers in and the inhibition evaporates and he flirts and he dances and he kisses someone. And it doesn’t feel the same as kissing his girlfriend, he doesn’t know if that’s better or if it’s a novelty thing. And every time it happens he calls her and every time she asks if he still loves her and he says “yes,” because how could he not. 

And over Christmas, they don’t talk about it . They only talk when he’s just done something wrong, and even then it’s brief. So they date and she comes up for his games and people see them kiss and her picture’s on his Instagram and sometimes he notices that she’ll tell him about how she finds one of his teammates cute and “doesn’t he think that Chris Pine in the Princess Diaries is the best iteration of Chris Pine,” and he turns red because he agrees and she forced him to watch those movies when they were like nine and he didn’t complain when she made him rewind the archery scene. 

She holds his hand and kisses his cheek and he thinks, “my god this should be enough, shouldn’t it.”

And he doesn’t know. That’s the worst part is that he doesn’t know because he’ll never sit down and let himself think about it for more than a second when he’s drunk. 

He calls her in his second year after he hooks up with Chad for the first time in the basement of the lax house. The picture of her at his family’s barbeque kissing his cheek is still up on his Instagram.

She sighs from somewhere deep inside when he tells her that he “doesn’t know what I was doing,” and he’s “Not...y’know.” he’s just not.

“Do you still love me,” she says. 

He insists that she does and she sounds tired when she says he believes him, so, still half tipsy he says. 

“If you ever want to…” he says, “Y’know, also do whatever.”

“Hook up with other people?” she says. 

“Yeah.”

She sighs again, “Connor I barely have time for you.”

Because yeah, of course she doesn’t have time for that. Whiskey’s girlfriend is a lot smarter than he is, he’s seen her homework, that shit’s intense. 

“It just doesn’t seem fair,” he says. 

“I’ll take the option,” she says, dry. 

“Oh. Okay,” Whiskey says. 

“Just,” she starts, sighs, “Can you answer one question?”

“I think I owe you that,” he mutters. 

“Is it only guys?”

His silence is an answer. 

“Maybe you should think about…”

“No!” Whiskey cuts her off,”I’m not,” he starts, “I mean I don’t know,” he pauses, thinking, “I don’t know quite what I am.” and it’s the first time he’s admitted that he might be something… different. 

“It’s college,” she says, “I think it’s okay to experiment.”

“It doesn’t feel… I’m just. I don’t know what I’m doing.”

“Okay, honey,” she says, “That’s okay.”

“Are you still coming for family weekend?”

“Yeah,” she says, “I’ll see you then.”

She watches his game, sits with Chowder’s girlfriend. They get along because she gets along with everyone. Because she’s that kind of person. She spends dinner complaining about her homework. Her lab partner sucks and her roommate is an airhead and Whiskey loves listening to her complain. She always makes sure to let him know that she doesn’t hate the subject of her ire, but is just deeply frustrated and actually they’re probably a lovely person. 

He thinks at least once a week that he must have stumbled into a relationship with the kindest person in the world. 

She curls up under his blankets and she lets him kiss her. She’s soft and sweet and everything about her feels safe and familiar but he can feel her holding back, guiding his hands to her waist and not up her shirt like she did last time they’d been together. 

“What’s wrong?” he says breathily. 

She sighs and rolls over. 

“Connor,” she says, “I just want you to be honest with me once, and not as your girlfriend,” she takes his hand in hers. 

Whiskey stops what he’s doing and looks at her. 

“No matter what you say. As your girlfriend, I can pretend you didn’t say it, okay? I’ve been cool about everything so far, nothing’s going to change that” She says. 

Whiskey nods. She squeezes his hand.

“But I’ve been your friend since we were little kids and we’ve never not told each other everything and all I want is for both of us to be happy, okay?”

And Whiskey agrees, though he just lays silent waiting for her to speak. 

“Connor,” she says, “Are you gay?”

And Whiskey tenses up, he doesn’t bolt out of bed and run though, so that’s a start. He feels like he owes her at the very least. Of all people, she's the only one he'd ever trust with this. The only one he's comfortable talking about uncertainty with.

“I dunno,” he admits. 

“How do you not know,” she asks. 

“I just don’t,” he says, he mumbles the next part, “I hate that it matters,” then he notices her brow furrow, “I mean obviously it matters to you,” he squeezes her hand, “but to everyone else. To Bitty and my parents and eventually the hockey world. It’s gonna matter if I… am.”

She takes a breath. 

“But I don’t think… I love you,” he says. 

“There are different ways you can love a person.”

“I like this way,” Whiskey kisses her forehead, “It makes sense. It’s not… complicated.”

“You don’t owe anyone an answer,” she says, “Whatever you are, I’ll love you. And if you need someone to be your high school sweetheart because ESPN would rather tell that story than the real one, then I’ll always be here for you.”

“So we’re still dating?”

“Sure, honey,” she says, “And hey, it works for me too. My parents love you and you are the lowest maintenance boyfriend in the world and if I can say that we’re still dating then they won’t bug me about being too ‘into my studies’ to find a nice boy.”

Connor laughs. 

“You’re gonna be like a doctor or a scientist or some shit.”

“They want grandkids.”

She kisses the tip of his nose and nestles into his chest. 

A few months later, when he tells Bitty he “Can’t be like him,” he means it in more than one way. 

He can’t be out and that’s the way Bitty takes it. He’s also pretty sure he’s not straight but not one hundred per cent gay either. He also knows that he can’t be an icon or a symbol like Bitty was, that he’d crack under that pressure, that he just wants to play hockey. He also can’t tell anyone that his love life is uncomplicated. It’s not the fairy tale ending kiss-at-the-cup-parade ending that Bitty and Jack got, who knows, maybe one day it will be but right now it’s messy and that’s his truth. He’s not like Bitty, sometimes he wishes he was. But his truth is messy. 

Most of all though, he can’t be like Bitty because he’s not certain, because he never has been and he doesn’t know if he ever will be. When he says he’s still dating his girlfriend, he’s telling the truth, because he is. Even though last week he and Chad snuck out to the pond and spent hours making out. He’s still dating his girlfriend because she’s his best friend and that makes this all so much easier. Because it’s already so hard, and to be able to say that he loves her (even if he’s not sure how) and to not have to lie about it, makes it work in some kind of weird way. 

  
  


**Author's Note:**

> tumblr is omg-whiskey


End file.
